


will you love me like you loved me, and i'll never ask for more?

by WillowsAndWastelands



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drug Use, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mutual Pining, Time Travel, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-12-30 06:32:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18310103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillowsAndWastelands/pseuds/WillowsAndWastelands
Summary: Klaus Hargreeves has never had a particularly strong grip on reality, but he's about to find a really good, six-foot and handsome reason to get one.This is the love story of two unlikely soldiers turned to even more unlikely lovers, and all the shit they went through to get to that point.God, if you're listening, help them both.





	1. The Beginning (January Rain)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fan-fiction (so please, go easy on me!) Because I was no where near satisfied with how little of the story we got of them, I decided to make it myself. Thank you so much for reading. I hope that you enjoy!

Klaus has never been described as having a real sturdy grip on reality, except maybe in the sarcastic sense. Maybe to make fun of himself. Maybe as a black joke when he’s high as a kite on God-knows-what, breathing in bubble-bath water; only coming up to scream when someone on the other side comes knocking.

No, he’s not quite right and he has a childhood chock-full of cold nights in dark crypts to thank for that. 

But he would pretty much swear on the world’s last Vicodin pill he wasn’t lying on mushy, black earth the last time he’d closed his eyes to blink. 

Wherever he is (and he thinks he can effectively rule out “bus” as a location), it’s as hot and humid as dog breath. The heat crawls up his already clammy body in an instant, inspiring a new sheen of sweat that’s far more uncomfortable than the kind he usually gets from the shakes. A low groan emerges involuntarily, and he wants nothing like he wants to close his eyes against a very strong, and very abrupt wave of nausea. 

“What the fuck was that?” asks a low voice, just a few feet away. 

So he’s not alone then, Klaus figures. This is an immediate comfort, knowing where there are people, there are cities. And where there are cities, there are places to get fucked up.

“Shut the hell up, Dave. I don’t have time for your bullshit,” someone answers, throat thick with sleep. “Stop waking me up all the goddamn time for fucking nothing.”

Klaus raises his eyebrows. He immediately likes this “Dave” character. 

“I heard something,” the voice, presumably Dave, responds, adamant. “I’m gonna go check it out.”

“Yeah, you go do that, princess. We believe in you,” comes the scathing reply.

The sound of fabric sliding over canvas follows, the creaking of a bed, and footsteps soon after approaching. Klaus panics a little when he remembers the briefcase still cradled in his arms and thinks of the big blue light that came out and swallowed him whole. It wasn’t the wad of cash he was hoping for, but if it got him from wherever the fuck he was to wherever the fuck he is, it can’t exactly be invaluable.

“Klaus.” Ben’s apparition arrives suddenly, standing over him. His face is serious and severe enough to sober him up even further. “Throw the bag under something, you don’t have enough time.”

Unwilling to argue, Klaus quickly sits up, ignoring the pain that goes through him like a wave at the movement, and throws it into a dark corner behind him. A tent’s corner, Klaus observes. 

Just where the fuck is he?

By the time he’s turned around, there’s a man’s silhouette coming out of the darkness. Klaus notices the lantern sitting so close to his righthand side and considers blowing it out to give him the element of surprise if it comes to a fight, but is then brutally reminded by the aching in his chest that he probably wouldn’t even stand a chance against thirteen-year-old Five right now. 

Then again, who really does have a chance against thirteen-year-old Five?

“Oh,” Dave says, his outline becoming clearer the closer he gets. Shit, Klaus thinks. This fucker is tall. And built. “I think it’s a false alarm. I’m sorry.”

The warm flame finally flickers over Dave’s face, and Klaus’ heart catches in his chest. The light reveals a strong jaw, tinged with dirt, blood, and scruff. He next notices a pair of very kissable lips though they’ve been split (maybe by a punch or two), an adorably crooked nose, and big, blue eyes that throw back the light twice as bright. Top it off with a head of the cutest brown, curly hair that Klaus has ever seen, and Klaus is pretty sure he’d collapse if he wasn’t already sitting down. 

“Hey, are you alright?” Dave asks, brows furrowing, obscuring Klaus’ view of his beautiful eyes. Klaus can feel himself frown involuntarily in response. He just wants them back to full, wide capacity so he can swoon a little bit harder.

“I’m just fine, baby,” is his rebuttal, meant to be smooth and subtle, but his voice breaks. What the fuck, Klaus thinks to himself. Pull it together.

“Um,” Dave says. Maybe it’s the withdrawal hallucinations, but Klaus could swear that a tinge of pink covers the man’s cheeks. “Are you drunk?”

He gives a little, uncharacteristically nervous laugh at that, and says, “Usually, the answer to that question would be yes. But, uh, no. Unfortunately--- no.”

“Oh. Well, you should probably get back to your bunk---”

“We should go get a drink,” Klaus interrupts unthinkingly. “I’m not drunk, but I should be. And you should be, too.”

“Uh, what?”

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal.” He shrugs, attempting to seem nonchalant. That’s the usual trick. “Maybe a dance, if you’re up for it.”

“Well, I---”

A deafening sound comes from the right, like the loudest clap of thunder Klaus has ever heard. He immediately curls in on himself on instinct, but is surprised to feel a heavy weight press over him from above. 

“Stay down!” Dave’s chest rumbles when he yells, reverberating into Klaus even louder than the noise outside. “It’s gunfire.”

“What the fuck did you just say?” Klaus cries. “Did you just say gunfire?”

It’s a wonder that Dave can hear him at all, since his face is being pressed into the dirt against the man’s not-inconsiderable body weight, but Dave replies nonetheless, “What else would it be?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Dave is off of him and pulling him to his admittedly unsteady feet. He stumbles, but Dave grabs him before he can do something stupid like fall.

“Where’s your uniform and helmet?” Dave shouts to be heard over the shots that are firing again. “We’re probably gonna be out there in a minute!” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Confused is an understatement. Klaus' heart hammers in his chest, and he recognizes the unpleasant tug of adrenaline and anxiety racing up his veins. 

The tent has quickly turned from a den of sleeping men into a bustling place; people shoulder-checking him with the force of linebackers when they race behind him and come back holding rifles and shitty raincoats. Everything, previously quiet and peaceful as he attempted to realize his surroundings, is so suddenly alive and up-and-at-'em that he can hardly stand it. 

Dave pulls him through the inexplicably angry, violent crowd to the bed he came from moments ago, never letting go of his hand even though Klaus knows it's slick with sweat and mud. It's admirable, really, but Klaus is so freaked the fuck out, he can't make much use of sentiment. 

Klaus yanks at Dave's arm, but there's no response. "Where am I?" Klaus yells, in a futile attempt to overpower the growing volume. When he doesn't reply, Klaus feels his stomach churn. "Please, just tell me where I am!"

“We don’t have time for this," Dave says, finally releasing him so he can yank open a small, dirty box at the base of his bed. From it, he retrieves a pistol coated in mud, blood, and gunpowder. "Take it. It's mine, so don't lose it." 

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?" Klaus asks, voice trembling. He'd like to act calm. He really would. But there are shots popping off like a twenty-first birthday party out there and he doesn't even know where he is. 

He can't breathe. He shouldn't have opened that briefcase. He needs a drink. He's gonna pass out. He's gonna suffocate. 

"Breathe," he hears Ben demand, but he cant see him. He's closed his eyes, because he can't handle anything that isn't his own head. Ben isn't so easily dissuaded. "We're gonna be fine, but you can't black out right now, man. Just breathe." 

"I can't," he gasps back, bringing up his fingers to wind in his hair. "Fuck... where the fuck are we, Ben?"

"I don't know, but we're never gonna know if you die here."

His lungs still aren't quite cooperating, but he forces air into them with quick, efficient gulps. "Would that be so bad?" he jokes, hoping to ease both his and Ben's tension. It falls flat on his desperate breath, but he continues, "Would it be so bad to die right now?"

No one laughs.

"Yes. Yes it would be," Dave says in place of Ben, and Klaus opens his eyes to the man tossing a damp, heavy jacket at him, colored mossy-green with a couple dark-red spots that Klaus doesn't want to contemplate the origin of for very long. "Put it on. We've gotta go. Now." He takes off toward the tent's opening with a purpose, grabbing Klaus by the collar of his shirt as he goes. 

Klaus pulls his arms through the sleeves and fastens the first button with hands shaking so hard, it's a wonder he gets the job done at all and follows after Dave blindly. The gun is an awkward weight in his palm, but he manages one more button before he's outside. 

The rain is an uncomfortably cold shock, spilling unto his face, falling in the space between his open lips and blinding his eyes that are open so wide; hoping to observe anything that would tell him where he is. All he can make out is a distant jungle, thick with greenery whipping wildly in the storm's wind, and bright orange sparks of gunfire that illuminate a barricade of sorts directly in front of him. 

Dave is quick to force them both down into the muddy, slick ground. Klaus keeps his grip tight on the pistol in his left but reaches out to him with his left, fingers winding in the starchy fabric of his coat. Dave doesn't seem to notice Klaus' weight, crawling up to the ramshackle board of sandbags and tree logs, taking Klaus with him. 

"What am I supposed to do?" Klaus asks when they've both found a place behind the wall, and Dave jumps a little, probably at hearing him so close to his ear. To his credit, Dave doesn't draw away. He just turns his face, nose bumping Klaus' on accident, and Klaus can feel his breath (surprisingly steady, and sweet-smelling) on his lips. It calms him a little. 

Dave fumbles his hands up from his gun and onto his chin. He unfastens the helmet's clasp before taking it off, and Klaus feels the heavy weight press into his skull a millisecond later. Warm fingers land on his skin, which are shocking against the frigidness of the rain, and buckle the thick, protective cap over him. Dave shakes his head a little, smiles the saddest, most beautiful smile Klaus has ever seen and says, "Shoot and don't get shot." Then, he pulls back and fires over their barricade while Klaus is trying to remember how to get oxygen in his body.

Klaus is still reeling (which he knows he shouldn't be, considering his life appears to be in imminent danger) from having such a gorgeous person in such close proximity, but he acts on mechanical instinct; cocking the gun in and flicking off the safety. He prays to God that it's loaded, thanks his shitty father that he at least did him the courtesy of teaching him how to handle most weapons, and hopes with every fiber of his being that neither him nor the incomprehensibly man beside him end up dead. 

"Be careful, Klaus!" Ben's voice echoes in his ears as he springs up from behind the wall, kneeling in the mud, rain running like a waterfall off the rim of his helmet. He can hardly see through it, but he aims at the farthest piece of ground and fires. 

He doesn't need another dead person catching him in his rare moments of sobriety to blame them for their death. 

"I don't blame you, Klaus," Ben reprimands, as if he can read his thoughts simply by his deliberate misfire. No, Ben has told him more than enough times that he doesn't hold him responsible. But Klaus knows the objective truth of the matter is that it's his fault, and that makes it somehow worse that Ben won't acknowledge it. He blames himself, and that's more than enough. 

"You're a shitty shot!" Dave yells, barely understandable over the roar of his own gun. Klaus shoots again, at another empty space on purpose, but he still feels a rush of inadequacy when he looks over to Dave's line of sight. Dave is a machine of death, Klaus observes, mowing down the running figures in the dark bullet after bullet. How lucky it is that he doesn't have Klaus' 'gift.'

"Maybe I'd be better if I knew who I was shooting at," Klaus says. Not being a complete idiot, he's gathered at this point that everyone here is a soldier, and obviously the men across from him are on the other side. Unfortunately, he's just not sure exactly what war he's in. 

"You and me both" is Dave's cryptic response. 

The shooting carries on until Klaus is confident he may never regain full hearing in either of his ears. Dave carries on with his massacre on the unknown, and Klaus knows that he has kindness in him (he threw himself over Klaus even though he'd known him for less than a minute and gave him his helmet without a second thought) but all the bloodshed is beginning to make him nauseous. 

The ghosts will be here soon if he doesn't get a drink in him. 

Words screamed in a foreign language ring out across the air, and then a very American voice comes a moment later: "They're retreating!"

Cries of victory pass around behind their little barricade, but they still a wait a moment before Dave and the other men pull themselves onto their feet. But some don't get up. Some stay lying down, faces pressed to the ground, bodies held at an awkward angle, eyes open but unseeing.

"Klaus..." a ghastly voice whispers, sounding as if they're choking on blood or something as awful as that. "Klaus, help us..."

Dave, blissfully oblivious to the dead, doesn't hear them. Instead, he winds his hand into Klaus' free one and lifts him until he's standing. Klaus tilts his head up to see him, to see something a little more beautiful than corpses, and isn't disappointed when he sees that same sad grin and same ocean eyes. 

The rain makes it like a movie (like a bloody, ugly, movie at that, but still a movie), and Dave looks so breathtaking beneath the water that you could forget he probably killed more people than he can count in the past half hour alone.

"So... how about that drink?" Dave asks, a small smile on his lips, and if they're standing so close that their knees touch and Klaus thinks he might pass out, that's no one's business but his own. 

"Yeah," Klaus says. He forgets they're on a field of death, and despair, and in a place he can't even name yet. He just clears his throat a little and says, "Yeah, I'd like that."


	2. I Think We’re Alone Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus and Dave finally get that drink, and finally have that dance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! Thank you so much for your kudos on my last chapter. It’s my first fic, so I’m really nervous but I’m more excited than anything else. Please enjoy!
> 
> (This is also probably gonna be a five chapter fic done by the end of the week. Thanks y’all!)

“Vietnam, huh?” 

They’ve been drinking for a while, in a little, uncomfortably warm bar that took a thirty minute drive in what Klaus has to imagine is the world’s most unstable bus. Tossed back and forth like they and the twenty older soldiers were in an inadvertent, but nonetheless violent pinball game; it was enough to make anyone nauseous. Or at least, that’s what Klaus told the boy who puked all over his shoes. 

Once they got settled on the rickety, worn stools and Klaus finally got some medicine (three shots of vodka and whatever he could quietly steal of the medic’s narcotics), the conversation flowed easy. Dave told him, though obviously believing Klaus’ story of time travel and a magic briefcase was utter bullshit, that its 1968, and the Vietnam war is the world’s bloodiest party. After last night, Klaus is inclined to believe him. 

“Yeah,” Dave says, laughing a little as he tips back his second glass of beer. For such a big guy, Klaus observes, he’s kind of a lightweight. “Yeah it’s the end fucking times. At least for us, anyway.”

It should not be endearing as it is that he’s buzzed off so little, but Klaus can feel himself smiling when Dave lets out a hiccup, then covers his mouth to muffle the next and fails miserably. The mouse-like squeak sends him into hysterics, ‘till he’s pretty sure that he’s cried off the last of his eyeliner. 

“What?” Dave demands, trying to sound sulky-serious, but he’s grinning so wide it almost splits open his chapped lips and crinkles his laughter lines. 

“Nothing, sweetheart, nothing,” Klaus says, finally getting a handle on the giggles, wiping the tears off his face. “You get drunk on water?”

“Beer is not water,” Dave says with the utmost, joking confidence, like he’s a leading expert and this is a sarcastic recount of his elaborate study. “Beer is beer.” 

In the evening light that slides through the cracked window shades, Dave’s indisputable beauty hits him again. Actually, ‘hit’ is too pleasant of a word. It’s more like it kicks the living shit out of him. The sun is somehow brighter in the blue of his eyes than it is in the sky, and Klaus is the cheesiest motherfucker, because he just wants to stargaze in them. 

With nothing but good intentions in mind, Klaus musters up his most gentlemanly smile, hops rather gracefully (for someone a little wasted, thank you very much) off the stool, slides his hand into Dave’s and asks, “Is beer enough to get that dance? Or can I interest you in something a little stronger?” 

Klaus can feel Dave’s fingers stiffen beneath his own for the briefest second, like how someone jumps at a static shock, and for a moment Klaus thinks he made a mistake. Of course, he thinks Dave is the hottest shit since lava, but he’s no asshole and he doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable. Klaus begins to pull back and readies his apology, but then Dave grips him twice as hard. Klaus looks up to see his face; as confident and sure as he’s ever seen it in these last few hours of knowing him. 

“No offense,” Dave says, a playful grin on his lips as he gestures with a nod of his head down to the bottle of pills Klaus had crammed in his pocket, “but I wanna be sober enough to remember this.” 

“Low blow, Dave.” Klaus pouts, but there’s nothing behind it. He’s too mentally occupied with the electric feeling of Dave’s palm pressed against his to concentrate on much else. 

“Is it? Well, I’ll be waiting for you to get me back then.” Dave’s teasing smile is too bright and adoring for Klaus to be comfortable, but it’s also making his pulse jump in a way entirely different to all the drugs and dead people. It’s addictive, and he should know something about that. 

“Let’s party then, hot shot,” Klaus says, making sure to drop his voice an octave and be slow and sexy about it (that’s the usual trick, but it feels strangely dirty playing it on Dave.) 

 

By the fact that Klaus can visibly see Dave swallow, he can guess if worked. “You’re on, Hargreaves.” 

Klaus is quick to yank him off his stool and pull them away from the bar now crowded with rowdy soldiers and tug him to the dance floor in the back. It’s a deserted space, probably because there’s no alcohol back here, Klaus figures. And that’s good enough for him. 

Any place quiet enough to actually hear when he takes Dave’s stupid, beautiful breath away is good enough. 

Dave beats Klaus to the punch, though. He leverages their interlocked hands; pulling Klaus in so close that that same sweet smelling breath fills up before he takes full, unfair advantage of Klaus’ surprise to get his other arm around him; rough, warm, calloused hand sliding up his spine. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Klaus’ air hitches in his throat. 

 

“We gonna dance or not, pretty boy?” Dave purrs in his ear, hot as hell. 

Klaus thinks he might’ve collapsed if not for sheer force of will. 

“Where the fuck is the Dave I met last night and how the fuck can we make him stay gone?” Is his witty rebuttal, but it’s obvious from the tremble of his voice that he’s far from unaffected. 

He feels Dave smile against the side of his face, sharp stubble digging just right into his skin. Come the fuck on, Klaus thinks. How the fuck is any of this fair? 

“You keep looking at me like that and I’ll make sure he stays on extended vacation,” Dave says, all casual and smooth. He pulls back, but just so he can see his face. 

And the most bizarre fucking part of it all is Klaus sees the same hunger he’s feeling reflected back onto him in Dave’s expression; clear as day, open as a book. 

“Say, uh,” Klaus starts, and then clears his throat when it comes out pathetically wrecked. “Do they even play music in this place?” 

Dave blinks, as if he was unaware. “I don’t really give a shit,” he says, candid as can be. 

“What the hell’s a dance without some music?” Klaus asks, but really he’s asking if he still wants to do this. If it’s still okay. 

“If you’re so worked up about it, you can sing for us, love,” he says, and then shrugs, shifting them both closer with the movement. 

Klaus, operating on only what has to be his fucking caveman brain, just opens up his mouth and speaks the first tune that he can think of: “I think we’re alone now. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around…” 

Dave hums, the vibration in his chest rattling Klaus’ skull in the most pleasant way possible. He begins to move them side to side, and it’s a million miles from the frantic makeout he was envisioning, but it’s somehow so much better; the rhythmic step, his offkey singing and the softness at which Dave holds him to his chest. 

He continues, marginally more confident, encouraged by Dave’s unexpectedly and overwhelmingly positive reaction: “I think we’re alone now. The beating of our hearts is the only sound.”

“I like this song,” Dave says after an awkward beat of silence in which Klaus frantically attempts to recall the lyrics. “Did you write it?” 

“You know what?” Klaus sighs, remembering how unlikely it is that he’ll catch him in the lie considering it’s the Vietnam war era and he’s approximately fifty years from home. “I did. I did write this song.”

“Well then, you just might be a genius, Klaus.”

“I know. I’m under-appreciated in my time.”

“Your time being two-thousand-nineteen?” The number is awkward in his mouth, skepticism evident. 

“Correct, big man.” He pulls back to give the most sarcastic smile he can manage, but he just looks up at Dave’s earnest face and he drops it instantly. 

There’s something so unabashedly pure in the way he looks, something so innocent and beautiful and clean, that Klaus just has to kiss him. 

It’s a simple thing. He frees up his hand, fingernails still caked with dirt and blood, but palm unstained as he reaches it through that beautiful, curly mess atop his head, pulls him down close, and Dave meets him the rest of the way. 

The kiss is brief, and sweet enough to make his teeth rot. A strange, orange flame flickers up in his chest, like a match stick suddenly struck. And it’d be okay. It would be. If when Dave pulled back, he didn’t place the softest kiss to the tip of Klaus’ nose as he went. 

Because then the match burns the whole place down. 

The fire just getting started. Just like them.


	3. Sinnerman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone loses a leg and someone loses their sanity. And Dave and Klaus have a very, very interesting conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your support! We’re over halfway done on this fic, and it truly has been a blast to write. Please comment and leave kudos if you enjoyed. Thank you!

Someone went and got their leg blown off. 

An eighteen-year old. Just a kid far too proud to dodge the draft, and all he’s got is five toes remaining to show for it.

Klaus had heard the offending land-mine go off from the camp, where he and Dave had been stringing up a fence of barbed wire under officer’s order, and Dave had flipped his shit. 

“Startled” doesn’t do his reaction justice. The deafening noise had just barely registered in Klaus’ head before Dave had thrown them both onto the ground (knocking the breath out of a poor, very, very high Klaus) and screamed in his ear like a fucking tornado siren, “Stay down!”

Klaus, dizzy from the sudden change of momentum and the brutal assault on his hearing facilities, couldn’t have argued with that if he tried. 

When they’d settled that there was no imminent attack, no new soldiers awaiting them in the brush, Dave took himself off Klaus (much to his well-vocalized disappointment) and helped him back up. Their officer approached them, eyeing Dave strangely, but said he wanted them to help the medic in taking the boy back to camp. He said it all heavy. Like they’d only be taking back a body. 

The jungle was thick with vegetation; greener than any grass Klaus had ever seen in the concrete jungle of New York CIty, and he remembers telling Dave as much. But Dave had gone strangely pale and untalkative; a complete stranger from the man he had begun to get to know since their hot, little tangle in the bar last night. 

Klaus remembers tripping over a tree root, landing on a soft bed of moss and feeling content to not get up. But Dave just picked him up by the back of his improvised army-vest with ease, and he cradled his arm, surprisingly tender, after that to help him walk as if his weight was nothing.

After what felt like an eternity and also fifteen seconds of Dave half-dragging, half-escorting him through the land (the fucked time perception owing thanks to the lovely little drug haze he had going on), Klaus saw the green ground abruptly turn red.

And there was so much red. 

Exploded ground, torn-up-soil, and in the midst of it, a boy screaming so loud that Klaus was unsure how he didn’t hear it sooner, even taking into consideration how high off his ass he is. 

Dave settled Klaus up against a tree just a few feet from the boy, like he thinks he wouldn’t be able to find somewhere to sit on his own. Maybe he couldn’t. Morphine is one hell of a trip. 

The boy was half-liquid. Sweat and blood poured out of him in a never-ending stream, like he drank an ocean and had fifteen hearts. And the medic’s hands were glossy where they tried to hold him down; stuffing a dirty rag between the boy’s gritted teeth. 

“I know you’re hurting,” Dave had said, going to kneel by the bleeding boy’s head. He picked up his hand and held it, even though the boy’s grip was white knuckled and had to be painful. “I know this hurts, but you have to keep quiet.”

Seeing him sit there with that dying, screaming, dreadful thing, Klaus made an abrupt realization of character about Dave. The man had an angel complex, or he was the real deal. Either way, something uncomfortably warm and probably inappropriate for the situation stirred in his chest to see all that unbridled kindness. 

“Can you hand me my bag, Dave?” the medic asked, and he was so soft-spoken that Klaus felt a genuine rush of guilt for having robbed him blind last night. 

“Yeah, what do you need out of it?”

“Whatever I’ve got for painkillers. I can’t move him until he’s calmed down.”

Klaus almost blanched as much as Dave, who witnessed him in his thieving act last night. He’d rolled his eyes when he had rummaged his bony, quiet hands through the sack and come up with as many pills as he could feel, but it wasn’t funny anymore. 

Klaus waited for him to (rightfully) rat him out. 

But he didn’t.

No, the motherfucker reached into his own back-pocket and pulled out two white pills. Unzipping and zipping the bag to create the illusion that that’s where he got it from, he handed them over. 

The medic thanked him in that quiet, little voice, and fed them into the corner of the bloody boy’s mouth. Thank God, the devil, or whatever the fuck is in control of this shitshow that only a short while later, he was sleeping. Even though he whimpered in unconsciousness, it was a massive improvement over the screeching. 

Dave and the medic laid him out over a stretcher. They were a limb short. Klaus’ stomach rolled a little, but he didn’t want to throw up. Usually, he didn’t have any reservations for etiquette, but it seemed like blowing chunks was the wrong thing to do.

On sheer force of will, Klaus followed the bloody parade before him. Dave and the medic made easy conversation, and it took his mind off the fact that he was basically Hanzel and Grettel, guiding himself on a trail of blood splotches through the woods. 

His memory gets hazier after that, but he distinctly remembers Dave’s hand in his when they’d arrived back at the camp. Not because Klaus was unstable, but because Dave was. He remembers the unshed tears in those beautiful blue eyes. The tautness of his jaw was excruciating. Klaus wanted to kiss away the tension, but he figured it was inappropriate. Their interlocked fingers were already a terrible risk. But every soldier was far too focused on their own thoughts to pay much mind. 

And now it’s midnight, and they’re on watch. Klaus is coming down from his self-induced high, and Dave has been crying silently while still managing to look stoic; gazing into the black jungle like he can see shit. 

“Why are you crying?” Klaus asks, without thinking about it like a fucking idiot. But it’s odd. He doesn’t really feel regretful for asking. He feels something with Dave. A strange kind of connection that’s as new as it is terrifying. 

Almost as if to confirm he heard his thoughts and was in agreement, Dave didn’t curse him out. He just said quietly, voice unshaking despite the wetness of his face, “I want to go home.”

Klaus, if nothing else, understood that. He had safely tucked the briefcase in a shallow grave and stuck a cross over it and hoped everyone was above grave-digging when he’d found he couldn’t get the stupid fucking thing to work after coming home from the bar last night. He just figured that he’d figure it out eventually, but he liked Dave enough to not be in any big hurry about it. 

He’d leave when Dave died. 

And Klaus, Death’s right-hand man, swear-to-God shuddered at that. 

There’s an entirely new fervor in his voice that surprises them both when Klaus shoots back, “You will go home.”

“No,” Dave says. In the darkness of the night, Klaus can barely see the glinting teeth of his sad smile. It breaks his fucking heart, if he’s honest. Not that he wants to be. “No, I know I’m not.”

Silence settles over them, thick and hot as the wet, jungle air. Klaus shifts uncomfortably, feels the press of the pain pills in his pocket, and feels a new curiosity prod at his aching brain (morphine isn’t nearly as fun to come down from as it is to go up on).

“Why didn’t you tell the medic I’m loaded the fuck up on pain pills right now?” Klaus asks, furrowing his eyebrows. “It probably could have gotten you a couple brownie points.”

“I like you,” Dave says simply, like it wouldn’t hit Klaus with the force of a fucking bulldozer. It’s just a little out of the ordinary, is all, that people would tolerate him, let alone like him. “I didn’t want you to get in trouble. And I figure you need them, for something. No one pops pills like that for no reason.”

“Oh,” Klaus says, like the intellectual he is. 

A pregnant pause takes place, but then Dave breaks it: “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you need it?” 

It’s not really a funny question. There’s nothing there that would reasonably inspire laughter, but for some stupid reason, it’s the most hilarious shit he’s ever head. He laughs and laughs and laughs, until his cheeks are slick with tears. 

“Why are you laughing?” Dave says, confusion evident, but Klaus can hear the smile in his voice. This only makes him laugh harder.

“Nothing… I’m just fuckin’ crazy, man. Off the rails on the craziest train. I don’t even know where to begin.”

“I don’t need it to be perfectly linear to understand,” Dave jokes. 

And then Klaus sobers. Like partying all night and then waking up with a hangover and a splitting headache, because he’s not gonna understand. No one is, except maybe Ben. And Ben doesn’t want to hear about it anymore than he already has. 

“Klaus? Are you okay?” he asks, puzzled at his sudden shift of mood. And Klaus is about to get up and leave before he does something stupid like cry when Dave catches his hand, sending that odd electric shock up his body. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

What the hell is it with this dude and saying these little things that knock him flat on his ass? 

“I see the dead,” Klaus blurts out; the words escaping on their own volition. “They’re everywhere. And they don’t want to talk to me as bad when I’m fucked up.”

Dave’s face betrays his skepticism for a split second, but it’s enough. Klaus is thoroughly embarrassed (an unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotion for him, thank you very much). He tries to wrench his fingers out of Dave’s grasp and leave, but Dave only tightens his grip. His face changes abruptly, like night to day happening in a split second. It turns so unbearably kind, and for a split second, it reminds him of his mother. 

“Like ghosts?” Dave asks, gently, as if he thinks he might break.

“No, like skeletons,” Klaus deadpans. It irritates him, to be talked to like he’s still a kid in a crypt; an anomaly that has to choose between the public’s pity or his father’s medical studies. “Yes, like ghosts.”

“Are ghosts here… now?”

“Is this guy an idiot, or something?” Ben says, suddenly materializing from behind him, and Klaus feels his whole body jump in surprise. He whips around to see his dead brother perching in a nearby tree, and gives him a very shaky middle finger. 

“Maybe,” Klaus says, answering Ben as he goes to look back at Dave’s now adorably over-concerned expression. “But he’s cute so I’ll let it slide.” 

“Huh?” Dave asks, confusion evident. 

“Nothing, sweetheart, don’t worry about it.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Klaus sighs. “I guess I didn’t, did I?”

“Are you gonna tell him?” Ben asks, curious. Klaus can hear him come to stand beside him, arms folded in his signature pose. “It’s not like he doesn’t already think you’re crazy.”

Klaus is just about to open his mouth and answer when a flash of white appears behind Dave, like a cloth taunting a bull. A high-pitched, childish laugh follows; echoing throughout his head. 

Klaus’ stomach drops. He’s only been high on morphine a small number of times, but he didn’t remember it wearing off this goddamn fast. 

A little girl with big brown eyes and bloody white clothes comes to sit in Dave’s lap, giggling and singing under her breath. Dave doesn’t react to her (probably because he’s so extraordinarily lucky as to not be capable of seeing dead children) but she looks up at him with all the love in the world. 

“Did you ever used to know a little girl?” Klaus says, not taking his eyes off the apparition. She tries to pull on his dog tags, but stops when he doesn’t move. Her lip wobbles. 

“My sister,” Dave says, so quietly Klaus almost doesn’t hear him. “My sister was, uh. She was.very young when she passed.” 

Klaus is about to offer his condolences but then the little girl wonders suddenly, shyly looking to Klaus, “Why doesn’t he see me?”

Klaus doesn’t want to answer, so instead he just inquires in the gentlest voice he can manage, “What’s your name?”

“Marie,” she whispers, like it’s a secret. And when she smiles so softly, Klaus doesn’t have the heart to not smile back (even though his face is wobbling like a son of a bitch.) 

“Marie,” he confirms, and is satisfied by her pleased nod. “It’s good to meet you, Marie.”

Klaus hears Dave’s sharp intake of breath and looks up. His complexion, in contrast to the deep darkness of the night, is the palest shade of white. He looks like he’s gonna throw up. Or pass out. Or die. Or all three. 

“Breathe, sugar,” Klaus reminds him. Dave nods his head a little and takes a few gasping inhales. “She’s not going anywhere. Are you, Marie?”

“I’m always here,” she responds earnestly, like it doesn’t snap his heart in half. “I follow my brother everywhere.” 

“She wants you to know that she’s always with you. Which is cliché, I know, but taking into consideration her age, it’s probably pretty original,” Klaus interprets to the almost hyperventilating man across from him. 

“Do you want him to know anything, sweetheart?” he asks the little bloody spirit before him. 

“Tell him I know he didn’t mean it,” she says, shrugging those (too small, too young to be dead) shoulders. “Momma said accidents happen.” 

And then she’s gone in the blink on eye, conveniently leaving that mystery up in the air, just her laugh left ringing through the air like a church bell. 

Klaus becomes abruptly aware of the fact that Dave is crushing his hand, he’s holding it so tight. 

“What else did she say?” Dave demands, voice desperate. 

Klaus considers lying, but in all honesty, he’s too tired to make it convincing. So he just responds, “She said to tell you she knows that you didn’t mean it. And accidents happen.”

The grip on his fingers becomes impossibly tighter. Klaus goes to apologize, opens his mouth to tell him how sorry he is that he said anything because grief is hard enough without someone telling you that ghosts are fucking real, but then Dave’s lips are on his. 

He lets go of his probably bruised hand so he can wrap it around Klaus’ neck, ruffling the hair there, bringing them impossibly closer. They interchange big, gulping breaths in between the short breaks that their mouths aren’t fused together, and he’s so getting incredibly dizzy off it. That same electric feelings goes up through his veins, shocking his internal organs and deep frying his poor brain. It’s the most passionate kiss of Klaus’ life, and that’s fucking saying something. 

“Thank you,” Dave gasps, then goes back in to peck him again. “Fuck, thank you, Klaus.” 

And that makes him feel sick. Klaus draws away, much to Dave’s confusion if his face is anything to go by. But Klaus doesn’t want to be paid in ingenuine intimacy for something he’s just so unfortunate to be able to do. 

“No… no it’s okay, really,” Klaus tells him, and he means it. He’s not some piece of shit fake psychic that needs something for doing basically nothing. 

“Huh?” 

“I don’t want ‘thanks for conjuring my dead sister’ sex, but I appreciate the effort,” Klaus explains. 

When Dave’s face contorts to revulsion at that, though it saddens him, that makes Klaus more comfortable. It’s more familiar to be hated than it is to be loved, and he feels more at home under this disgust. 

But then Dave shocks the shit out of him yet again, saying in an almost hilariously scandalized tone, “No! No, I didn’t mean it like that. I swear I didn’t I just— you’re incredible.”

“Oh,” is all Klaus’ brain cells can come up with. “Oh, um. Alright.” 

Dave opens his mouth to say something else, probably another fucking bombshell that Klaus has a very inconvenient inability to see coming, but are interrupted by incoming footsteps. 

“Shift change,” a new man’s voice informs the two confused, emotionally-devastated looking boys. “I’ll take it from here.” 

Klaus squints up to see a hand stretched out to him, takes said hand, and is pulled to his feet. 

“Thank you,” both Dave and Klaus say in unison. 

“Don’t worry about it,” the man placates, going to sit in their now vacated position. “I’ll take it from here.” 

They walk in uncomfortable silence for a bit back to their camp, but at least their hands seem to unconsciously find one another along the way. 

“Klaus,” Dave begins, but is interrupted by some very, very fucking loud screaming. 

“KLAUS!” 

“KLAUS, HELP US!” 

“KLAUS, PLEASE!”

Klaus goes to his knees. 

It’s so fucking loud. 

It’s so fucking loud, oh fuck. 

Klaus fumbles for his back pocket, for the fucking tranquilizers he stuffed back there last night, but his hands are shaking so hard he can’t do it. 

He can’t do it, but he’s gonna go goddamn deaf or he’s gonna die he doesn’t care he doesn’t care it’s so fucking loud

“KLAUS!”

A hand goes over his mouth, shoves something in. Please, let it be poison, Klaus thinks. He can feel the outline of a pill, and he just swallows on instinct. 

“KLAUS HELP US PLEASE HELP US KLAUS” 

“I can’t,” he cries back, desperate to make them understand. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” 

And the voices start to fade out in tune with his consciousness, like he’s being lowered into a grave, away from the noisy earth. 

He’s almost asleep, and all is so blissfully silent. The last thing he hears is “I’ve got you. You’re safe.” 

And he almost believes it.


	4. Happy Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus and Dave fall into a strange, unexpected kind of love. It's good for them both. Until it's not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter after this left! Thank you so much for all your support. I truly have loved reading all of your comments (so please comment if you enjoy, I love talking to y'all) and thank you to everyone that has given me Kudos as well. It's truly been wonderful so far. Please, enjoy the sweet joy and pain of this chapter :')

It becomes a strange sort of routine for them, over the next few months.

Dave starts to carry more of his “nighty-nighty” pills than Klaus himself does, and if that’s not proof enough of love to someone like him, he doesn’t know what is.

Klaus tries to rationalize it in every other way; he truly does. He tries to cast it in the light that Dave is just a better thief, and since they appear to be stuck to one another like glue (their officer never separates them for an assignment), Klaus figures that Dave just doesn’t want to hear him bitch about it, so he steals the pills in the interest of keeping both their sanities. But the theory doesn’t stick. Dave is too kind, too eager to hear the complaints of anyone that’ll talk to do it for that reason. Klaus then ponders the idea that he’s doing it so he’ll conjure his sister again, but Dave never brings up that night. Unlike most of the bereaved, he seems to have a vehement avoidance about the subject and doesn’t seem much interested in talking to the bloody little girl. No matter how he tries to cut it, it always comes back to Dave and that fucking idiot’s idiotically big heart. 

The unexpected upside of it all is that the little girl has become Klaus’ personal gold mine canary (not that he’d tell Dave that, he has some sense to him, thank you very much.) It’s hugely beneficial, because though they both steal where they can, there’s not exactly enough sleeping and pain pills to around, so they have to be conservative about when to dose Klaus up. Thanks to Dave’s dead sister, Klaus knows as soon as he sees her that the more angry and volatile death are fast approaching. Most of the time, Klaus is fast enough to shove a big white pill down his throat, but Dave is there for when he’s not. He pins him down into the dirt (not an easy feat, though Klaus is small, he’s not weak), opens his screaming mouth (Dave’s got the bite scars to prove it), and forces his jaw back closed once he’s dropped in whatever the fuck they could find out of some poor fool’s bag. To top it all off, he carries him back to his makeshift bunk in the tent when it’s all over. Klaus always tries to apologize when he wakes up, looking at his bruised face where he must have landed his desperate face, but Dave doesn’t take it. He just says something all joking and cute like, “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. This ain’t nothing. Your swing isn’t that good.”

And Klaus tries to take care of him in return, but it’s hard when Klaus is not entirely sure who he’s dealing with. Even after the long, dragging months and hundreds of hours they spend fighting for their lives in the jungle, waking each other up from their impending nightmares and generally just keeping one another from dying, Dave doesn’t feel much inclined to talk about himself. Everything Klaus knows is from observation and from observation only, like that he’s a whiskey man, will try any kind of food you offer him, and he’s got a great poker face but he twitches his right eye a little when he’s lying. Still, Klaus does what he can. He offers up his own food and drink when he sees his face betray him after bluffing that he’s not hungry or thirsty anymore. And if Klaus is a little skinnier than when he came because he likes seeing Dave’s full face, sue him. 

Among all this, they fall into a very predictable kind of love. They kiss each other in the cover of any shadow they can find, hold hands in the miserable rain just to make it a fraction less miserable, and they don’t leave one another behind. It’s simple, and it’s easier and more understandable than anything Klaus has ever had with anyone in his entire life. 

Once, when they were on the early morning watch shift, eyes trained over the sunrise and fingers laced together, Dave had cleared his throat obnoxiously and uncharacteristically loud. Klaus looked away from his studious post (he actually took the duty pretty seriously) and prepared to crack a joke about needing a lozenge, but his teasing smile faded when he saw what Dave had outstretched in the hand that Klaus wasn’t holding. A silver dog-tag gleamed against the five a.m. sun. 

“Dave…” he had said, feeling sudden tears begin to burn in the front of his skull. “Dave, you can’t mean--

 

“I can,” he interrupted, smiling that big beautiful smile. “And I do mean it.”

Looking into his impossibly brilliant, gorgeous, god-crafted face, Klaus felt the strongest rush of inadequacy and failure he’d felt in his life (which was saying something, considering the family he came from.) He knew he didn’t deserve what a dog tag signified, and he tried to convey that, saying “No… no, I mean. You don’t want me like that. You can’t want me like that. I’m fucked up and ugly and mean and I---”

“Klaus,” Dave had said, cutting him off again. His smile didn’t do so much as wave, proving he knew Klaus well enough to anticipate the reception this would get and not be discouraged by it. “I love you.”

If there was a bit of air in Klaus’ lungs to be breathed, he couldn’t find it. 

He loved Dave. He’d known that within a week of meeting him, when the man threw himself into harm’s way for no good reason except to save Klaus’ sorry ass, and he loved that he was stupid enough to think that the value of their lives were equivalent, and he loved that he was kind and caring and that he was as beautiful as the day is long, and fuck, he loved him. 

But Dave wasn’t supposed to love Klaus. That wasn’t supposed to be in the cards. 

“I love you, too,” Klaus choked out through a tight throat. And then he started to sob. 

Tears spilled down his face with reckless, embarrassing abandon, and he felt Dave hushing him in comfort before sliding him over onto his lap like his weight was inconsequential. He just held him against his chest, kissed the top of his ratty, gross hair and told him he was okay.

“Why are you crying, sweetheart?” Dave had asked when Klaus had calmed down a little, deep voice rumbling through both their heads.

“You’re gonna die,” Klaus said, clutching his face into the sweat-soaked fabric of Dave’s jacket. “You’re gonna die, and I love you, and you’re gonna leave me here.”

“I’m not gonna die,” Dave promised, like he could say it with any kind of warranted authority. To his credit, his voice sounded undoubtable; filled with confidence. “We’ll go home together, and we can start a new life.”

Klaus didn’t give a shit about where home was. He didn’t care about the briefcase or getting back to a future that didn’t want him. He just gave a shit about making Dave’s words prophecy. 

So Klaus had just tightened his hold on him, pulled them even closer and said into his ear, “The master bedroom better be huge in our new house, or I’m walking out.” They both laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. 

Even though it would never even have the chance to come true. 

\--------------------------------------------

It’s the one and only night that Klaus had been there when it didn’t rain buckets, and he has been here for almost a full year now. The clouds still hang thick and heavy, like a lead promise ring for a downpour, but they still don’t obscure the moon enough to make the moving troup invisible. 

Klaus and Dave hang at the back of the group while they march under the sickly sky, trading occasional glances that speak a million words without saying anything. 

My socks are wet, Klaus portrays with an angry glare.

I have an extra pair, Dave tells him with a placating raise of his eyebrows. 

“I love you,” Klaus mouths, and blows a kiss to top it all off. 

“I know,” Dave stage whispers back, catching the kiss and then pretending to eat it. 

“You’re so fucking weird,” Klaus says aloud at regular volume, forgetting they’re in an active warzone. When everyone spins around to look at him, he just shrugs, lowers his voice and says, “You’re all so fucking weird.”

A couple people give him the finger, but the march goes on. Dave rolls his eyes when he’s sure Klaus is looking his way, but the incident is otherwise forgiven.

Then a shot goes off, and the world changes. 

Dave grabs Klaus’ wrist with truly remarkable speed and throws them into the ditch by their left side. The thick, humid air explodes into deafening noise and sparks of ammo flying every which way. There are screams and shouts and commands in a language Klaus doesn’t understand but is pretty sure means, “kill these sons of bitches.”

“Are you okay?” Dave shouts into his left ear, leaving his whole head ringing with the volume. They burrow themselves down into the mud and grass out of pure instinct, both of them also fastening their helmets to their very vulnerable brains.

“I’m fine! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay!”

They meet eyes, and when Klaus doesn’t see the tell-tale twitch that would indicate that he’s lying, he looks away to search for the pistol on his belt that Dave gave him on his first night here--- the one he always carries but never intends to kill with. He can hear Dave doing the same; rustling through his bag to load up the gun he wields with deadly precision. 

Once they’re both ready and armed to the teeth, they lock their hands together for just a few seconds. Just to feel one another and know they’re not alone. 

“Kiss me?” Klaus asks, just as he has done before every other bullshit firefight they’ve ever gotten in (and the number is pretty goddamn countless.) 

And Dave, damn him if he’s not a sucker for tradition, because he just smiles, wraps his fingers into Klaus; hair, pulls them both in close, and kisses him like the world is ending. The electricity flies between them (Klaus distantly wonders if he’s ever going to get used to that and decides he’s probably not, or at least he most definitely doesn’t want to.) They pull away breathless, but happy. Smiling. Laughing in the same place that people are screeching like they’re never going to stop. 

They both leap up from their safe space at the same time, firing into the vaguely people-shaped crowd on the other side. Klaus aims for the stars, because he can and because the military is buying his bullets, but he knows Dave shoots to kill. They go down quick and easy under his capable hand.

Its several minutes of routine, government mandated murder. Klaus is numb, having taken a couple morphine pills before they even began their trek, so his heart is hardly palpitating. It’s just more of the bullshit they’ve gotta get through before they can go home. 

An abrupt, earsplitting sounds explodes on Klaus’ left side, as if to mock him for making note of the relative peace. Pain races up through his head and he feels a hot trickle of blood fall down his cheek, but he doesn’t give much of a shit about a burst eardrum. There reaches a certain point where something (Klaus’ body, namely) is so fucked up that you don’t care if it gets fucked up anymore. 

“Christ on a cracker!” Klaus exclaims, hardly able to hear himself. “That one was close. Are you alright?”  
There’s no answer, but it’s so loud that for a moment, Klaus doesn’t think anything of it. He can hardly hear himself either. He just continues to fire at the stars blindly, trying again: even louder “Are you okay?”

A beat passes, and there’s nothing. Klaus turns to look at him for an explanation and Dave’s face is in the mud, neck twisted in a position that can’t be comfortable. Why would he lay like that, Klaus wonders. And he wonders why his heart drops into his chest, too. And why there’s a big, red hole in Dave’s head. Klaus doesn’t remember that being there. 

His body reacts before his mind does. He just starts screaming. And screaming. 

Because there’s a bullet in Dave’s skull. And that doesn’t make sense--- it’s just a bad dream, and he’s gonna wake up next to a very alive Dave in just a moment. 

His throat aches, but he just keeps screaming. 

It’s so real that he’s kind of impressed with his subconscious’ imagery. 

It’s all so real

It’s all so real

It’s all so real that it has to be real but it can’t be

It can’t be

No, Dave promised that they were going home, and they’ll be home soon. No, there’s no Klaus without Dave and since there’s still Klaus, there’s still Dave. It just doesn’t make sense it can’t make sense it’s not real there’s no real this can’t be real

He’s screaming “Medic! I need a medic!” and he rolls Dave over, and he feels a rush of relief because he thanks fucking God that those big beautiful eyes move just a little, just enough to make it real. But then he sees the streak of blood out of the same mouth he’s kissed a million times 

And he goes cold because  
Every man he’s ever seen die in this godforsaken place  
Bled just the same way

“Dave, Dave, baby, please,” Klaus is pleading, dropping the pistol into the bloody mud so he can hold Dave in his lap. Dave just looks at him, just seeing him and saying with those eyes

Saying I love you

And then they don’t say that anymore and they’re just empty as hotel pools and Klaus knows that it’s real and that no one’s gonna wake him and

“No, no, no, no,” he sobs, clutching him to his chest like if he squeezes hard enough, he’ll wake up. “No, please, please!”

There’s no refuge from this moment. He just sits amongst the same gunfire that took the only person he ever loved, holding a corpse that used to love him back in his lap, and he screams and cries and cries until he remembers 

“You said you weren’t going to die, Dave!” he laughs hysterically, and feels himself choke on his own snot and tears. “You promised me you wouldn’t leave me here alone, you bastard!”

But the promise is broken   
And Klaus is

alone.


	5. The End (love me like you loved me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus deals with his grief in some of the worst possible ways. Dave was loved. It’s never easy to lose that kind of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is it. (I’m weirdly emotional, so bear with me.) This isn’t my first fanfic, and it’s finished. Thank you so much to everyone who’s given me Kudos and bookmarked it and commented. It truly means so, so much. Please comment if you enjoyed because I love talking with you all, or if you have any further requests for future fics (I’ll write any character in the umbrella academy.) Without further ado, here’s the last chapter❤️ I hope you enjoy :,)

Klaus would feel bad for Ben, if he could feel anything at all. 

Ben had watched him screaming in the bloody mud for hours, cradling a corpse he wasn’t sober enough to conjure a person out of, and then try to take his own life as the big finale of it all. But he couldn’t look away from Dave long enough to fill his gun with bullets, pull the trigger and do the world a favor (in his opinion, it would be both an act of mercy for himself and everyone that ever met him. He hates Ben a little for disagreeing as vehemently as he does.) 

And Ben watches when morning breaks over the scene, illuminating just how awful it really is, and it much be almost as hard to see as it is to experience, because Ben turns away and Klaus doesn’t blame him. He’s too occupied with holding his dead lover’s face in one hand, and pulling sharply on his dog tags with the other, like it will somehow make it feel like he’s still there. 

It doesn’t. 

The medics come when they’re sure all the gunfire has cleared— the men from the other side gone home—but they’re not coming with their big bag of tools and gauze. They’ve just got one, big empty bag and a couple somber faces to show for it. 

“Don’t make this difficult, Klaus,” the same man who helped that poor land-mine kid when he first got there. His voice breaks, betraying his otherwise stoic expression and Klaus just thinks of how Dave was loved here, by more than himself. “We’ve gotta get him home.” 

“I know,” Klaus says, inflectionless, like he understands. But he doesn’t, because there’s no getting him home. He doesn’t voice this to them though, he just lets go of the dog tags for a minute to wipe his eyes and say again, “Yeah, I know.” 

He leans in close, just so he can see his face one last time; commit it to memory for however much longer he can stand to be alive. But it just aches, because there’s no sweet-smelling breath to wash up over his face, no moving lips to laugh and kiss him. There’s no Dave there. Still, Klaus lifts his shaking hand to close those haunting, blue eyes and plants a quick kiss on his forehead. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into an unresponsive ear. He starts shaking then, his whole body wracked with an uncontrollable tremor. He can barely get out, “I’m so sorry, baby” between his chattering teeth, but he manages. 

The medics move in then, lifting the lifeless cadaver that used to be full of something so beautiful and amazing. Something Klaus didn’t deserve and couldn’t protect. To see that shell is just too much. He turns and vomits into the mud; acid crawling up his throat and burning his mouth, but he hardly feels it. He hopes he chokes. 

But he doesn’t. He just lays there in the blood, and the mud, and the sick before another medic comes to pick him up out of it, assuming he’s injured, too. And he doesn’t care enough to tell them what hurts when they ask. They just carry him back to camp, slung over a sharp shoulder like a sack of something unimportant, and Klaus supposes that’s not far from the truth. 

They get back to camp. It’s not the home it was a day ago. It’s just a place; a place that Klaus no longer belongs. He’s not a soldier. And he’s got nothing holding him here anymore, because the dog tags he’s wearing belongs to someone that’s not coming back. 

So Klaus does what he always does when he’s lost get another home; gets as fucked up as he can possibly manage and hopes he dies over it. 

He grabs every godforsaken pill bottle he can find in the stuffy fucking med tent they put him in, and takes off after making a quick spot to his bunk bed where he watched Dave stash his whiskey. 

“Don’t drink it all in one go,” Klaus had joked when he’d watched him hide it beneath ammo rounds and tent braces, remembering the night they danced in that bar. “You may be handsome, but I’m not built for babysitting a lightweight like yourself.”

“You wish you could handle this,” was Dave’s response, and they had both laughed. 

Nothing was funny now, though. Klaus was gonna drink it in one gulp. 

The walk into the jungle is quick and easy. No one stops him, or asks him to take their shift or lend them a sock. They see the look on his face, the bottle in his hand, and they look away. 

Klaus never wondered whether anyone knew how he and Dave had loved each other, but this was just confirmation that they did. In retrospect, it was pretty goddamn nice of them to keep their mouth shut about it. 

Klaus is pretty sure he’d break someone’s jaw right about now if he heard Dave’s name come out of their mouth. Those four letters were hallowed ground. 

And so when he’s walked as far as he could into the thick forest, he doesn’t fight it when his legs give out underneath him. He just falls onto the mossy ground, crying without tears because he has nothing left in him to make them with. 

The bottle lid falls off quick under his desperate hand. He takes the liquor by the neck and throws it up to his mouth to drink in big, choking gulps. He’s sure it should burn, but he can’t feel shit. 

“Are you gonna fucking kill yourself? Is that the goal?” Ben asks, abruptly appearing in front of him. Klaus closes his eyes to dispel him, knowing that he’ll soon be gone. Even Ben has to go away eventually. “Dave wouldn’t want you to—“ 

Klaus takes the bottle out of his mouth then to spit, “Dave isn’t here now, is he?” 

Ben isn’t so easily deterred. He fixes himself with a severe expression, looking Klaus dead in the eye. “No, but he could be if you were sober.” 

And Klaus thinks about that, he really does. He thinks of Dave screaming his name in the same terrified voice almost every other dead person does, and he just shakes harder. 

Him pulling the pills out of his pocket is answer enough for Ben. He leaves Klaus in the jungle by himself. Klaus isn’t angry at all. He wouldn’t want to watch his brothers do this to themselves. 

He crams morphine pills and sleeping aids and motherfucking antibiotics just because they feel good going down against the hot brandy in his throat. It’s starting to hurt— not nearly enough to eclipse the growing grief in his chest but enough to offer a wonderful little respite. 

The world slips and slides through real and not real, like reality is in a tug of war and Klaus is the rope. He can feel the hot jungle beneath him but he also sees his father’s disappointed face, the sound of helicopters whirring in the sky, sees a crypt door creep open, hears Dave’s scream, feels the relentless rain pound against his skin, kisses unnaturally still lips, cries into the ground, drinks as much as his belly can hold. 

And the last thing his brain can do for him, just to pull him apart a little more, is provide him with an image of Dave laying beside him. Imperfect. Bullet still lodged in his brain, bloody streak still running out his mouth, but he smiles. And naturally, just when Klaus tries to cling to consciousness, it rips itself away. 

 

——

He comes to on the same bus he left from. 

He’s holding the suitcase, and his hands are thick with dried blood and dirt, but he doesn’t remember digging it up. He doesn’t remember anything except trying to drink himself to death in the most humid place on earth and, evidently, being unsuccessful. 

He has the sense he’s been awake for a while, like he’s been operating without thinking about it. Or maybe he’s just an amnesiac. It doesn’t matter. 

People look at him on the bus, curious as to his ragged nature, but he must be in a big city because no one asks him about it. They just spare him a quick judging glance and then try to avert their eyes. 

Klaus couldn’t give half a shit if they stared, because he’s not really seeing any of them. He’s just glaring out the window, seeing Dave’s dead body, feeling the cold corpse in his hand, wondering at the red streak coming out of his mouth and—

The bus jerks to a sudden stop. The driver calls out a location in a big voice, but it doesn’t matter to Klaus. He just feels their legs move on their own accord down the aisle and out the narrow door likes he’s possessed. 

The air is different here. The lack of humidity makes his skin itch, and for some reason, that’s what brings him back to his body. He’s shoved full force back into himself; feeling the pulsating headache echoing throughout his skull, the heavy grief settled in his chest, the thick nausea pervading his stomach. It’s an unpleasant homecoming. 

But what’s more unpleasant is the growing, insatiable anger and sadness within him. Because Dave isn’t here to tell him he’s okay. He hasn’t come home. 

He’s not going to come home. 

Klaus loses it. He swings the briefcase up through the air, knowing it’s the culprit of all this suffering because if it weren’t for the stupid fucking thing, he’d be okay right now. He’d never know someone so beautiful lived, and then they died. And they died bloody, and guilty, and Dave should have died innocent and pure and maybe if Klaus hadn’t been where he shouldn’t have been, where he didn’t belong (basically anywhere) than maybe Dave would be old and gray and happy and not dead and not dead and not dead 

And he slams that briefcase into the ground; feels an inexplicable heat crawl up his elbow on impact. Sparks fly out of it, but it’s not enough. Something has to pay for the fact that there’s probably a gravestone out there with his name on it right now.

He beats the everloving fuck out of it, kicking and screaming until the thing blows up like another goddamn landmine but there’s no Dave to sit with him and tell him he knows that it hurts but he’s gotta be quiet, gotta be still, to take the pills out of his back pocket and feed them in until he’s sleeping and safe. There’s no Dave here. 

He falls to the ground, legs too weak to carry this realization and he curls in on himself like it’ll save him from that pain. It doesn’t. It doesn’t, and he realizes the only reason it did in the past was usually because Dave was there to hold him. 

“Dave, baby, I’m sorry,” Klaus repeats, sobbing into the ground like it’s mantra. “I’m so sorry.”

He’s not deaf, so he hears people around him begin to discuss the crying man on the ground. They ask if they should call emergency services, and one angry shopkeeper just wants him off their property. He plugs his ears against the noise, trying to focus on his loss. 

But then a new voice, clear and unstoppable cuts through all the chatter. Klaus could swear his heart stop. 

“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart” Dave says, tone soft with sympathy. “I’m here.” 

And when Klaus opens his eyes, he is. Laying beside him on the pavement, smiling, eyes big and soft. 

Bullet still in his head.


End file.
